Texas Tech and SMU’s season opener moved to Friday primetime by ESPN

Good news came Wednesday if you’re a fan of the Red Raiders or the SMU Mustangs.

The offseason is going to be one day shorter and the two teams will
play one more nationally televised game as ESPN made a judgment call to
throw the Texas Tech at SMU game into its opening college football
weekend rotation.

Texas Tech’s game at SMU has been moved from Saturday, Aug. 31 to a 7
p.m. kickoff Friday, Aug. 30 at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in University
Park. As of today, the Texas Tech-SMU game will be the third game the
ESPN family of networks airs all season. North Carolina at South
Carolina and Mississippi at Vanderbilt will be played the day before to
open the 2013 season.

USC at Hawaii, Utah State at Utah and UNLV at Minnesota are all
slated for Thursday, Aug. 29 and could potentially beat the Red Raiders
and Mustangs onto national TV in some form or fashion.

But the point remains Texas Tech and SMU have been chosen to air in
prime time on the first Friday of the college football season where
there’s an extremely high interest in the season purely because of the
lack of football February through August.

Texas Tech at SMU will take on North Dakota State (the 2011 and 2012
FCS National Champions) at Kansas State in the Friday primetime slot as
the just announced FOX Sports 1 network bumped it from Aug. 31 to a
7:30 p.m. kickoff Aug. 30. FOX Sports 1 should be available to 90
million households in comparison to the 99 million households ESPN and
ESPN2 are available in.

The game in University Park provides a lot of storylines and should win the Aug. 30 ratings war.

The game will be Kliff Kingsbury’s debut as the head coach of the Red
Raiders, the two teams’ starting quarterbacks went to Lake Travis High
School together and SMU has moved up to the BCS conference level with
its move to the Big East Conference. ESPN couldn’t go wrong with this
matchup while most teams will take on lesser opponents.

The bottom line for all teams involved in nationally televised games
at unconventional times on opening weekend is those teams will get a
jump start in fan interest. The winner of Texas Tech at SMU will get
more exposure live and on highlight shows than Georgia at Clemson which
will be going head-to-head with LSU versus TCU and comes on just after
Alabama versus Virginia Tech on Aug. 31.

The game will be Texas Tech’s first appearance on a Friday night
since the 2002 season. Incidentally, that was Kingsbury’s senior year as
the quarterback of the Red Raiders.

Texas Tech and SMU’s previous meeting was a season-opening game
played on the Sunday before Labor Day in 2010. That game was former Red
Raider head coach Tommy Tuberville’s debut in Lubbock in an ugly 35-27
win.

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